Why is this newsgroup so prone to

Pete Fenelon

I thought everybody had figured out by now that this is a reasonably inevitable steady state for online communities. Once a room-group becomes habitual to its users, a community develops and its habituZs will use it like a bar - where everyone knows their names, etc - to discuss events of the day, their prejudices and preferences, and basically treat it like any other socialisation venue. This effect can probably only be prevented by strict moderation, which results in a different kind of experience entirely.

The standard Usenet answer to your complaint is to suggest you stop seeing yourself as a net.vigilante and if you don't like the water, don't swim. There are plenty of groups far more dysfunctional than this one, with resident trolls who make a.f.c denizens seem quite bearable. And in fact, a.f.c is a relatively civil community that has developed an albeit needlely camaraderie.

If you want access to people who were directly involved, this is not a bad place to be. Why don't you make an on topic post and find out?

And now an instance of the infrequent meme, "isn't everything in a.f.c crap, I don't understand it".